Asia Pacific Topics

Sri Lanka’s new government said Saturday it is scrapping compulsory military training for school teachers and undergraduates. The three-week army training, which was mandatory under ousted President Mahinda Rajapakse’s administration, had resulted in at least three deaths in recent years and was deeply unpopular ...

U.S. President Barack Obama will shorten his trip to India and divert to Saudi Arabia, paying respects after the death of King Abdullah and meeting with the oil-rich nation’s new monarch, the White House said Saturday. The scheduling shift, announced just before Obama left ...

Barack Obama will do something in India on Monday that an American president almost never does in public: He’ll sit in one place, in a foreign country, for hours. Obama will be the official “chief guest” at India’s Republic Day parade. The first U.S. ...

What's Trending Now

The original founders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” were arrested and released Saturday as the city’s police chief defended the investigation into mass protests, saying it was not “a show.” A number of protest leaders have been arrested and released without charge, with ...

Thailand’s former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said Friday that democracy in her country is dead after the military-appointed legislature voted to ban her from politics for five years and the prosecutor announced plans to indict her on criminal charges in connection with a money-losing ...

When Sri Lanka unexpectedly turfed out President Mahinda Rajapaksa in an election this month, it was the biggest setback in decades for China’s expansion into South Asia — and a remarkable diplomatic victory for India. Despite New Delhi’s protestations, diplomats and politicians in the ...

With Hong Kong increasingly polarized on political reforms and fears growing over the influence of Beijing, frustrated residents are pressing former colonial power Britain to offer them an escape route. Their push for a new status that would allow them right of abode in ...

President Xi Jinping and the six other members of the Communist Party’s elite Politburo Standing Committee have been given 62 percent pay rises, state-run media said Tuesday, as civil servants get their first increases since 2006. Xi’s basic monthly pay will go up to ...

U.S. academics and former senior officials met with North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator in Singapore on Sunday to get a feel for each other’s positions amid a years-long standoff over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons buildup. Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project ...

Arms outstretched like Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer, a towering Confucius statue stands in the seaside resort that hosts the Chinese Communist leadership’s summer retreat, opposite a hulking monument to President Xi Jinping’s dreams. The gleaming gold-yellow sculptures are part of a 50 ...

Taiwan’s Beijing-friendly ruling party appointed a new leader on Saturday in the hope of reversing its fortunes after its worst-ever local election setback reflected growing fears over Chinese influence. President Ma Ying-jeou resigned as chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) over the election defeat in ...

China is investigating one of its top spy chiefs for corruption, the ruling Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog said, signaling that the boldest crackdown on corruption in decades has spilled over into its powerful intelligence apparatus. Ma Jian, a vice minister at the Ministry of ...